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Allegory Quotes

Allegory Quotes by Sarah Fielding, Charles Baudelaire, Thomas Mann, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Vanna Bonta, J. R. R. Tolkien and many others.

[Allegory] is a flight by which the human wit attempts at one and the same time to investigate two objects, and consequently is fitted only to the most exalted geniuses.
Sarah Fielding
Everything for me becomes allegory.
Charles Baudelaire
It is remarkable how a man cannot summarize his thoughts in even the most general sort of way without betraying himself completely, without putting his whole self into it, quite unawares, presenting as if in allegory the basic themes and problems of his life.
Thomas Mann
Nothing is as contagious as enthusiasm. It is the real allegory of the myth of Orpheus; it moves stones, and charms brutes. It is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Each character is an allegory for every aspect of human existence.
Vanna Bonta
I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence.
J. R. R. Tolkien
We’re now seeing levels of inequality raise their heads that we haven’t seen since the age of the robber barons. If somebody watched The Deuce, and understood the allegory about capital and labor, and understands what happens when one side is vulnerable to the other, that would be swell.
David Simon
V is like a mythical situation. It’s an allegory for what could happen. V has philosophies within it that actually warn against things like that happening.
David Lloyd
If you tell a story that’s only allegory, then it doesn’t help you at all. If it doesn’t bring some emotional charge, then it’s just talking about something.
Boots Riley
Confession is a sacred rite enhanced by allegory, exaggeration, and lies.
Craig Ferguson
What makes Jessica Jones series so unique is that it really is an allegory for many different types of abuse, whether it be sexual abuse, physical abuse, or psychological abuse. That’s what makes this such an incredibly bold show.
Rachael Taylor
There’s something in the human personality which resents things that are clear, and conversely, something which is attracted to puzzles, enigmas, and allegories.
Stanley Kubrick
Jesus walking on water is an allegory, not fluid mechanics. God destroying the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah is a warning, not a historical battle. Doubting Thomas is an example, not a person. The story of Noah, with all of its scientific and historical impossibilities, can be read the same way.
Kyle Hill
I think cinema is closer to allegories than to reality. It’s closer to our dreams.
Manuel Puig
A man’s life of any worth is a continual allegory.
John Keats
Allegories are, in the realm of thought, what ruins are in the realm of things.
Walter Benjamin
Nature is a word, an allegory, a mold, an embossing, if you will.
Charles Baudelaire
It is one thing, then, to say, “The Bible contains the religion revealed by God ,” and quite another to say, “Whatever is contained in the Bible is religion, and was revealed by God.” If the latter be accepted, metaphor and allegory become literal statements and the errors and absurdities of bibliolatry follow.
Lionel Trilling
Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.
Leo Tolstoy
Obviously I don’t want to make a film that offends people, but the whole world is so politically correct – I’m not going to not do something because it may be politically incorrect. At some point, the metaphors and allegories break down. They disappear, and you just have science fiction.
Neill Blomkamp
There are many ways of writing badly about painting… There is an ‘appreciative’ language of threadbare, not inaccurate, but overexposed and irritating words… the language of the schools which ‘situates’ works and artists in schools and movements… novelists and poets [that] see paintings as allegories of writing.
A. S. Byatt
I dislike allegory wherever I smell it.
J. R. R. Tolkien
A story, to me, has a particular sprite, like the angel of the spirit of that story – and it’s my job to attend to what it wants to do. When I tell the story of Cinderella, the sprite does not want me to make it into an allegory of the fall of communism. The sprite would be unhappy if I did that.
Philip Pullman
Much scientific truth proved to be as hypothetical as poetic allegory. The relationshiip of those rod-connected blue and red balls to an actual atomic structure was about the same as the relationship of Christianity to the fish or the Lamb.
Tom Robbins
Allegories, when well chosen, are like so many tracks of light in a discourse, that make everything about them clear and beautiful.
Joseph Addison
The tree has been always an allegory for spiritual growth.
Juan Antonio Bayona
Everything for me becomes allegory
Charles Baudelaire
We each create a story – a narritive, a picture, an allegory, a model – for what’s going on in the universe. And then we fight – sometimes to the death – to make others believe in that model, or to be able to keep believing in it ourselves. In other words, we try to erase contradictory evidence to that model.
Douglas Rushkoff
I don’t like allegory.
China Mieville
We need to find another way or another shape or an allegory or something that tells us more. Even Vagabond – it was a fiction but it was really a documentary. I mean, it has the texture of documentary. Even if I made up every line, it has the texture of being true.
Agnes Varda
I can work in films as long as the story doesn’t have a realistic nature. If I’m working with an allegory, a fantasy, it can be developed in synthetic terms.
Manuel Puig
Analogy and allegory always seem to be a much more expressive way of reflecting reality. I think Star Trek team have this ability to represent through analogy and extending things to the scientific extreme. They comment on things that are very present in a really powerful way.
Lydia Wilson
I think the best science fiction, especially literature, is political in nature and is often an allegory about something problematic in our world, and it’s something that makes the ‘X-Men’ comics so relevant – they’re about xenophobia and prejudice.
Simon Kinberg
There’s so much power in allegory, to form ideas and learn lessons that you can actually take and apply to real life. I think that’s why I originally really loved fantasy and reading.
Amandla Stenberg
for … austere and gracious allegory, as for so much of its mysticism and its chivalry, its ardours and its endurances, the world is in debt to Spain.
Helen Waddell
I don’t want to make a film that offends people, but the whole world is so politically correct – I’m not going to not do something because it may be politically incorrect. At some point, the metaphors and allegories break down. They disappear, and you just have science fiction.
Neill Blomkamp
Once one is beyond a certain level of commitment to the sport, life begins to seem an allegory of rowing rather than rowing an allegory of life.
Stefan Kieszling
A fairytale is not an allegory. There may be allegory in it, but it is not an allegory.
George MacDonald
A naked lunch is natural to us We eat reality sandwiches. But allegories are so much lettuce. Don’t hide the madness.
Allen Ginsberg
Freemasonry is ‘veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols’ because these are the surest way by which moral and ethical truths may be taught. It is not only with the brain and with the mind that the initiate must take Freemasonry but also with the heart.
Carl H. Claudy
If you’re looking for a spiritual allegory in the style of C.S. Lewis, I guess you could piece something together with Lorne Michaels as a symbol for God and my struggles with hair removal as a metaphor for virtue
Tina Fey
I don’t know if you’d do a Marvel story on Ferguson, because it trivializes what the real flesh-and-blood people on the ground are doing there. But you can make an allegory and deal with the bigger questions.
Mark Waid
I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations.
J. R. R. Tolkien
A man’s life of any worth is a continual allegory, and very few eyes can see the mystery of his life, a life like the scriptures, figurative.
John Keats
An allegory is not meant to be taken literally. There is a great lack of comprehension on the part of some readers.
Naguib Mahfouz